500 organisations publishing data to the International Aid Transparency Initiative Standard

500 organisations are now publishing their activities to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). This major milestone was reached when Simprints, a non-profit tech company from the University of Cambridge, committed to publishing to the standard.

Since the UK’s Department for International Development became IATI’s first publisher in January 2011, billions of dollars of development spending has been published to the IATI Standard by a multi-stakeholder community of bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, foundations, private sector organisations and development finance institutions.

This year IATI has seen one of its steepest rises in publishers, with an increase of one hundred in the last eight months. The boost is due in part to the Dutch Government’s requirement that organisations receiving their grants publish data to IATI.

Thanks to the efforts of IATI publishers, data on thousands of development and humanitarian activities across the world are easier to access, use and understand. This information can help developing countries better plan their national priorities, as well as increase the accountability of development actors.

IATI will continue to support its publishers to improve data quality, as well as to work with stakeholders to increase the use of IATI data, particularly at country level.

As the technical lead for IATI, Development Initiatives supports organisations to publish to the standard, works to improve the quality of the data that is published, and promotes greater use of IATI data.